"He might tear you apart with a pair of pliers, but he won't try to snipe you. He doesn't have that cold temperament – he gets all excited when he's killing somebody. That's what I'm told."

Two Vietnam War veterans executed in the Twin Cities, their bodies posed at war memorials, lemons in their mouths as gags. State investigator Virgil Flowers knows someone's sending a message, but who? And, more importantly, why?

Virgil had been promised the hard cases, but this one is more like a nightmare. When nobody is who they seem to be, and when everyone involved has a different story, the only safe place is out of the way. But Virgil, determined to get to the truth, is very much in the way. And that's an inconvenience that someone, somewhere, needs to fix. Permanently.